My Maps

HERCULINE'S HELL

Once upon a time, I grew ambitious and drew up a few Doom maps of my own. Two of them were called BLOOD BURDEN and OMINOUS OASIS and were intended to be part of a 32-level megaWAD entitled HERCULINE'S HELL. The alliteration was intentional and would follow in the titles of the other 30 maps, if I had ever created them. Below are a few screenshots from those levels and the comments people posted regarding them:

BLOOD BURDEN

"Some okay ideas for architecture with mediocre execution and gameplay. ZDoom requirement is superfluous, since it's only used for a few pointless stealth imps (this should be limit removing vanilla or boom instead). There's one fence which you can't shoot above despite there being nothing there. 2/5"

"Decent map and start of a upcoming megawad. 3/5"

"I was really impressed, if a little bored. The fighting is a bit too slow; however, the use of slow pacing in non-combat shows great discipline. I really liked how the atmosphere drew the player into a calm tide of uncertainty. But, yeah, I would work on making the fights more intense. Great use of lighting, also. I hope to see more. 5/5. PS. How do you get the RL? :P"

"no sir i dont like it"

"I want to say that I appreciate the effort put into this. However, I found a lot of flaws. There were a lot of rooms/areas that looked too similar and there was a lot of backtracking, which made the game play very slow. I did like the starting area, though--original design, nice use of the marble texture, strong architectural design. Keep thinking in this direction and I think you can make this map really good. 2/5 for now, though."

"This must be one of the biggest level entirely based on marble textures I have ever played. And with quite good action and nice secrets. This is so good! 5/5 - Optimus"

"Not bad, I've seen worse first-attempts :)"

"If you look at the automap, you will realize that this is just a thinly disguised Oblige map with ZDoom features. 3." ~ Kate "Pink Silver"

"Automatic 0/5 for author's dishonesty."

"It's a fucking Oblige map. Nothing more. 0/5"


"^ and ^^ agreed with"

"I have seen this map before.."

"1/5 just for not blatantly copying an Oblige map. Otherwise this is trash."

OMINOUS OASIS

"Once again I couldn't work out how to get the RL, which was a shame coz at one point I had no ammo and 64 rockets. Like the first, I thought it was a fun map that would benefit from more intense encounters (maybe intermix the pain elements, cacos, and imps more). Thanks for sharing."

"this is grandmama again , honey. doing great!!!!(and yes , i really am an old lady)"

"typical newb-ish map with quantity over quality and mechanical copy-pasted detailing over sense. filename length excess 8+3 rule."

"there is no change in map02 (zdoom)"

"Clearly, this also came from Oblige, and the author didn't admit (or credit the program, for that matter). 0/5 immediately."

"Oblige again..really? Are you that stupid??"

"TBTBEP2 (Too bad to be enjoyed properly 2) ~That guy over there"


"Voting 5, to counter the idiot that said that this is an oblige map."

"Not bad, but it's a little boring and textures are plain... well, you needed more work on it I think. 2.5/5 -playerlin"


"1 star only because you at least tried modifying the Oblige map."

As you can see comments were actually for the most part constructive and encouraging, both in the file comments and my Doomworld forum thread regarding the project, until someone calling herself Kate "Pink Silver" decided to comment in The Newstuff Chronicles that she believed my maps were not created by me but instead were authored by an automated random map generator program called OBLIGE. After that everyone (including both the reviewers and the creator of the program) seemed to jump on her bandwagon and I felt shunned by the community to the point that finally I totally deleted my original blog that had been intended to focus on the progress of my own projects. Instead I now blog about the works of others.


But despite appearances this blog post is neither intended to advertise my own apparently questionable works nor to lament the fact that they did not go over well with the Doom community at large.


The point of this post is instead simply to inform followers of this blog that my upcoming reviews of classic Doom levels are not totally uninformed opinions. I have some mapping experience, minor although it may be. I've used DOOMBUILDER and I know what linedefs, sectors, vertices and nodes are. Thus when I'm playing through a map I know something of what was involved in the author actually creating it. If I describe a map as being very detailed and complex that's not just a statement of my opinion but also a statement that I know something of how much work the author put into the map and that I admire those efforts.


So, starting with my next post, I intend to review here classic Doom maps and provide readers with links to where they can download them. It is my sincere hope that both newcomers to the game and experienced players alike might discover here some enjoyable Dooming experiences that they might otherwise have overlooked. My next post, focusing on maps created by the authors who had their works included in the famous id Software release THE MASTER LEVELS is already in the works, but as it turns out that's well over 50 maps to review so it has taken a bit longer than I had planned to actually finish the post. I hope to make it available to you within the next few days.


Until then, thank you for reading and for helping to keep this classic game alive.